A renowned physicist from Vadodara in Gujarat, Karan Jani shared his ordeal on Twitter. 29-year-old Jani claims the organisers told him he did not look like a Hindu.
"Year 2018 & Shakti Mandir in Atlanta, USA denied me and my friends’ entry from playing Garba because: “You don’t look Hindu and the last name in your IDs don’t sound Hindu,' Jani's tweet read.
According to Jani, the organisers 'ganged up' and told him to leave.
"My other friends' last name had “Dangarwala”. We spoke in Gujarati to them. They still said we were “Vohra, Sindhis”. They actually kept stating other religions!! They ganged up and told us to leave."
Vohra is a smaller sect of Islam, and there are many Vohras in Gujarat too.
Dr Jani says he had tears in his eyes.
"Our IDs had Indian Emblem. Yes, emblem with “Satyamev Jayate” right? Apparently, it didn’t have our religion. Our caste. It was embarrassing. I had tears in my eyes saying them: “I come here to play Garba for last 6 years. How could you not let us in because of last name,” he said in a tweet.
SBS approached Shree Shakti Mandir for a comment, but no response has been received so far.
However, according to The Times of India, Dr Jani received a call from the temple management and the chairman apologised to him.
Dr Karan Jani is a postdoctoral research fellow in Astrophysics. He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. According to his website, he was part of a global team of scientists who helped discover the existence of gravitational waves, which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.
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